Editorial: A big fat bill

A national disease prevention group announced some more bad obesity news this week - obesity rates in 31 states last year increased and not a single state showed a decline.

Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the Trust for America's Health, noted that while there is much discussion about making sure people have health care, if America continues to fatten up, it will be nearly impossible for our country to afford to pay the bill. In 2003 - and the obesity problem has worsened significantly since then - taxpayers were paying about $39 billion for obesity through Medicare and Medicaid and a total of $75 billion total in obesity-related health-care costs.

The Centers for Disease Control released a report last year stating that 32 percent of Americans are obese. Not surprisingly, the CDC also found that nearly a quarter of Americans said they had engaged in no physical activity in the previous month.

What a surprise that we are getting fatter - we eat too much and are as sedentary as possible. Unfortunately, there will be a huge price to pay for the obesity epidemic both in sickness and higher health-care costs.